The present disclosure relates to an electronic money system, a money amount change information transmission apparatus, a server, and a money amount change information transmission method, and relates to those that transmit money amount change information required to change a balance to, e.g., an electronic money card.
With recent popularization of electronic money, business transactions using electronic money have been actively conducted.
The business transactions using the electronic money are conducted by operating electronic data called “value” having an exchange value equivalent to money to transfer values.
A balance of the value is written in a built-in IC chip in, e.g., an electronic money card, and settlement can be performed by accessing the IC chip from an electronic money terminal installed in, e.g., a store to reduce the balance.
Further, an amount of the value stored in the IC chip can be increased by accessing the electronic money card from the electronic money terminal. Processing of increasing an amount is called “charge”.
When performing charge, collecting money corresponding to an amount that is charged from a user of the electronic money card enables achieving association between the value and a currency.
The electronic money terminal stores utilization log data recording settlement with respect to the electronic money card or processing contents of charge, and transmits this data to an electronic money server by batch processing approximately once a day, for example.
The electronic money server collects/stores the utilization log data from each electronic money terminal, and tallies such data once a month, for example. Furthermore, an operation company of the electronic money distributes a money amount collected from a user at the time of charge to each affiliated store (a store that performs settlement based on the value) to settle accounts for funds in accordance with a result of this tally.
As a technology that uses the value stored in the electronic money card to perform settlement in this manner, there is, e.g., the following service provision method.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2000-250994
According to this technology, a value previously stored in an IC card is used to pay for a service.
The electronic money terminal transmits money amount change information (a command) to the electronic money card to increase/decrease the value balance but, when the electronic money card does not make a response that the money amount change processing has been executed after transmission of the money amount change information, since whether the balance has been changed in the electronic money card is not unclear on the electronic money terminal side, any countermeasure must be taken.
Such a situation may be possibly uncommonly occurring when a use environment has a problem, e.g., when radio frequencies of other devices are also present.